What is real sportsmanship?

The Athletics World Championships which took place in Osaka last week are finally over. Such excitement ensued over what seemed to be a rather long Championships.

Team GB overachieved in the medal stakes by getting 5 medals instead of the projected 3. Well done! I was mightily impressed by the starlets of the GB Team, Nicola Sanders and Christine Ohuruoghu. They showed great guts and determination to pull off a hatrick of medals, and who would have thought that Christine would come home with the top prize, a gold medal?

Throughout the Championships all competitors showed the world how much effort must go in to getting to World Class level, and also how much it means to them when the hard work pays off; even how hard it can be to take when it does not pay off. Jo Pavey again ran her socks off in the 5,000 metres only to be worn down by the speedy Africans. However, even though she did not place in a medal winning spot, she did get a season's best time.

The one thing for me however, which put a bad taste in my mouth during the Championships, were the comments made by Kelly Sotherton regarding the silver medal heptathlete, Lyudmila Blonska from the Ukraine. Sotherton bemoaned the fact that Blonska had just come off a 2 year ban from athletics due to a doping violation and that she felt that she may well still be under the influence. Sotherton commented on how she thought the crowd were not supporting Blonska and neither were the other heptathletes. Now, personally I think that these comments were rather inappropriate as there is, as yet, no evidence to show that Blonska is taking anything to enhance her performance. Also, as to whether or not the crowd and other competitors are supporting her is for them to say and not Sotherton. In my view, Sotherton overstepped the mark and showed that she has yet to show real sportsmanship.

Even after winning the bronze medal she could not bring herself to talk about how perhaps she could have focused on making her performance better, particularly the javelin discipline, but concentrated on focusing on the performance of a competitor she had doubts about.

Perhaps there are things which have gone on behind the scenes which we are not privy to, but I still think that the best sportsmanship is to let your performance do the talking and not your mouth!